TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE GERMAN "PANAMA."
THE German Emperor must be terribly moved by the scene which his satirical subjects in Berlin are already calling "our German Panama." It has been his boast from the beginning of his reign, that he personally governs, and is qualified to do it ; that be knows all that is going on ; that he can promote or depress the right men ; that he is, in truth, the motor, as well as the fly-wheel, of that gigantic machine, the Administration of Prussianised Germany. His Majesty would be glad to think just now that he was less responsible, for the grand fact which comes out in the Von Liitzow trial for libel is that he has constantly been deceived and misinformed by agents whom, nevertheless, he presumably never sus- pected, for he, the " free King," the absolute Emperor, did not dismiss them. We utterly reject as unjust, as well as untrue, the suspicion that William II. intrigued against his own Ministers, or even watched them more intently than every master must watch his servants, and believe that the general history of a most complicated affair is much more nearly this. Prince Bismarck created in 1878 a secret police to watch personages whom he considered dangerous to the newly founded State, and to control the Press, a power which the old Chancellor knew to exist, failed to understand, and with the whole strength of his pcwerful nature at once dreaded and despised. While he remained in power he wielded his instrument without difficulty, for besides that no one dared oppose him, he had the control of " the Guelph Fund." the sequestrated in- come of the Hanoverian dynasty, which he devoted, as he once publicly acknowledged, to his secret service. After his fall the secret police got out of hand, as it is the historical tendency of every secret police to do, whether under the Bourbons or the Napoleons, or the Romanoffs or the house of Othman, and either from the personal predilec- tions of its chiefs, or because it had fallen under unknown but powerful influences, it set itself against a party in the State. It hated those who had " usurped," as the Chief Commissary calls it, Prince Bismarck's position, and tried to create in the Emperor's mind the impression that they were betraying his favour and his policy. The methods of operation were probably various, but one, it is alleged by the head of the Foreign Office, and it is proved by this trial, was to induce editors to make unpleasant state- ments in their journals, and then to " report " the evidence which induced the secret police to believe that the false state- ments had emanated from the Foreign Office, the idea being thus to create in the Emperor's mind a. false impression that his own Ministers were betraying him, probably under " English " influence. There is reason to suspect that an impression of this kind, if it did not cause Count Caprivi's dismissal, did produce the suddenness and appearance of deep irritation by which that dismissal was accompanied. After the fall of that very upright and capable, though unsuccessful, statesman the hostility of the secret police was transferred to his successor, Prince Hohenlohe, but more especially to Baron von Marschall, the Foreign Minister, a younger and more determined man than the experienced but cautious Chancellor, and there- fore more detested by Prince Bismarck's party. The secret police, however, had in this instance mistaken their opponent. After bearing, as he himself con- fesses, intolerable annoyances for years, Baron von Marschall turned on his foes, dragged them, as he said, " into publicity," and is the real, almost the osten- sible, prosecutor in the libel case which has ended in two leading agents of the police being sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment. Moreover, the chief who em- ployed those agents is not, if guilty, to escape. One of the statements intended to influence the Emperor's mind was an assertion in the Berliner Tageblatt that Herr Leckert, who, it was believed, had falsified the report of the Russian Emperor's speech, had been received by Baron von Marschall at the Foreign Office. Being received, the inference was easy that he was a secret agent. Dr. Levysohn, editor of the Berliner Tageblatt, was accordingly summoned, and testified on oath that Herr von Tausch, head of the secret police, had himself caused this incriminating statement to appear in the paper Herr Levysohn conducted. Herr von Tausch, the Chief Commissary accused, energetically denied this ; but Baron von Marschall offered some corroborative evidence, and the Court, with a non-respect of persons which should not be forgotten by those who condemn German methods of dispensing justice, at once ordered the arrest and trial of Herr von Tausch on a charge of perjury. So far Baron von Marschall, who knows so well what he is risking that he was often agitated as he gave his evidence, has triumphed all along the line.
What will be the result of his triumph remains to be seen. There are those who believe he will be Chancellor, the Emperor perceiving that he has the nerve so neces- sary to the holder of that great office, and there are those who believe that he will be ruined, the Emperor being unable to tolerate a Minister who, even in self-defence, has brought such a scandal upon his capital and his reign. His fate, however, though interesting, is a matter of minor importance compared with that of the system he has exposed. If the Emperor is wise, the lesson he will learn from the whole affair is not that Baron von Marschall is rash or cautious, acceptable or otherwise, but that it is necessary to sweep away the secret political police as a dangerous instrument of administration. A body of that kind never imparts real strength to a throne, far less to a State, for the most obvious reasons. It weakens instead of strengthening the loyalty of the regular Ministers, who even if they are neither watched nor suspected, are sure to fancy that they are, and sure, moreover, to dislike the idea that " reports " of which they have no full knowledge- reach the Sovereign whose confidence is the foundation of their power. Even Talleyrand, who was always cool, fretted against Fondle, and paid spies to watch the spies of the secret police, with occasionally the oddest results. All the honest work it can do, such as the protection of the Sovereign, can be done better by the regular police— the Third Section, with all its powers and all its resources, did not save Alexander II.—and its temptation to do dis- honest work is almost irresistible. Every Department likes to show that it is useful, and to a secret police the occur- rence of plots, of movements that at least seem dangerous, of scandals that require investigation and secret reports, are the very staff of life. The head of such a Department is rarely a scrupulous man, scrupulous men disliking what they suspect must be dirty work ; he is sure to have strong personal antipathies and likings towards the great personages of the State—Fouche, it seems clear, hated Napoleon — and he is of necessity served by some of the most unscrupulous of mankind, whose business it is to make themselves acceptable or important by furnishing precisely the intelligence which their employer, as they know, most desires, or on occasion most dreads. Then they become at once important and trusted agents, character is overlooked, failures are forgotten, and money is forthcoming in abundance. Above all, the kind of power with which they are intrusted—necessarily in- trusted—intoxicates a secret police. Almost all men thirst for power, and to men like these the most for- midable of all powers, that of secret delation, of affecting the course of events without being recognised as actors in them, becomes a delight, a source of pride, and a tempta- tion to invent things which may be delated. One of the most historical complaints against the secret police in Russia, in France, and now in Germany, is that its in- solence has become unbearable, its inferior agents who know their power being unable to refrain, whatever the rank of opponents, from showing that they know it. As for the relations of the secret police with the Press, what good, even on the Continental theory as to such matters, do they do which an able private Secretary of the Department concerned could not do infinitely better ? They are sure in the end either to manufacture false news, or to produce that most dangerous of all impressions, that every word in a journal which receives early intelligence, however unauthentic, and every view, however crude or unwise, is either " inspired" or circulated by the Department from a wish to deceive. The whole Department should be swept away, and the people informed that the German Government, like the English or the American, relies for safety or for informa- tion upon agents whom it recognises, and can, should necessity arise, even quote. What has the German Government gained in all these years from the secret police which has so tried the loyalty of officers who wish to be loyal with all their hearts ? Nothing except a knowledge, usually inaccurate, or what is worse, half- accurate, of intrigues which it is wiser as well as bolder wholly to disregard. What is the use of placing such an instrument at the disposal of the factions ? and it is always some faction, and not the Sovereign, which in the end manipulates the secret police.
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